Our live radio broadcasts are currently on hiatus while we work on improvements to Sanitarium.FM's core services. For further information, visit our Discord.
I consider myself a collector of video games. Whether I got my games in a really good sale or from a game bundle; I’m currently sitting on over 300 games, many I have yet to try out. Guess it is time to delve into the pile and see if I can find some awesome games for you to play.
This week I chose to try out the game named Finding Teddy.
Finding Teddy is a Puzzle Point and Click game where you play as a little girl who is trying to find her teddy bear that was stolen by a monster from the cupboard in her room. She follows the monster though the cupboard and then finds herself in a magical world full of bizarre creatures and enchanting sounds. Now she must explore this strange land and help its inhabitants in order to rescue her Teddy.
The gameplay of this game is pretty simple. You mainly move around the world by clicking the sides of the screen to move on to the next area. You will quickly find that some areas you won’t be able to get to until you solve a puzzle or help one of the inhabitants. For example, one of the first “puzzles” you come across is trying to get bye a large blob creature blocking your path. If you don’t come to it with the right item it will eat you and digest you.
While these ‘bring object to creature’ puzzles are common in the game, one of the more unique types of puzzle that is common in the game as well is the musical puzzles. On the top of the screen you can reveal some lines of musical “notes” that you can press, each playing a different tone. As you go through the game you reveal more and more of these notes as you solve puzzles using them.
In this world the little girl is traveling though, the only way to communicate is by uses of these musical notes. This game contains no dialogue, only music. Even the sound effects in the game are just a series of musical tones. This is probably one of the things I enjoyed most about this game. It’s very calming and really adds to the atmosphere of the game.
One of the main problems I did find with the game was that at the beginning of the game you are just thrown into this world without really any idea how to move or how to even play. But after a bit of randomly clicking around the screen I quickly figured things out and was able to get the feel of it.
I would rate this game a 7/10. The games aesthetic and general atmosphere is very enjoyable. And while the puzzles weren’t overly hard, it feels good to figure them out and move on to the next area. So, if you are a fan of Point and Click games or just want a simple, calming game to spend a couple hours playing I would recommend this game to you. If you are not a fan of these sorts of games, it may not be for you.
You can buy it for PC, Mac, and Linux here. (Finding Teddy is currently on sale 50% off on Steam until 3/10/14)
It is also available for iOS and Android.
I am a lover of great deals and this usually leads to me finding game and music bundles on a variety of sites including Humble Bundle and Groupees.
Today I found an awesome bundle on Groupees.com called the VGM & Beyond Bundle. This is a bundle of Video Game Inspired Music; including music created using original Gameboys, 8-bit/Hard Rock Fusions, Electronic-Symphonic works, and various Covers of Video Game music including a chilled out Reggae cover of the Mario Theme.
How can you say no to that?
What’s best about it is you only have to pay at least $1 to get it. But I suggest paying a bit more if you can for this bundle. A percentage of the money from the bundle goes to help a young child in India named Surya who needs to have heart surgery to fix a hole in his heart.
If you’re a serious gamer, you’ve undoubtedly heard of DirectX. With a rich history spanning over 20 years, Microsoft’s home-grown graphics controller and drivers are still used in many games today – particularly those targeted at consoles and Windows PCs – to enable visual splendour, capable 3D graphics and more. But while it may remain a popular technology, the last version of DirectX officially launched by Microsoft, 11.1, was last updated in 2009. Five years later, with devices becoming more powerful and capable, the technology’s age has begun to shine through, leading many developers to ask Microsoft to supply the tools to take DirectX further and extract the most out of any hardware the games end up on.
According to Microsoft’s DirectX Developer’s site, the company is finally set to deliver on that promise. In a sponsored session at this year’s GDC, entitled “DirectX: Evolving Microsoft’s Graphics Platform”, Microsoft’s development manager for graphics at Microsoft – Anuj Gosalia – is set to reveal the company’s plans for DirectX12. The official GDC website offers the following description of that talk:
For nearly 20 years, DirectX has been the platform used by game developers to create the fastest, most visually impressive games on the planet. However, you asked us to do more. You asked us to bring you even closer to the metal and to do so on an unparalleled assortment of hardware. You also asked us for better tools so that you can squeeze every last drop of performance out of your PC, tablet, phone and console. Come learn our plans to deliver.
Nothing is yet known about what Microsoft plan to reveal – besides the increased power alluded to in the above description – but the talk appears as one of a number of DirectX-related talks planned to be hosted by Microsoft this year, which also apparently includes a talk on the future of Direct3D; and eight talks related to the current DirectX 11.
Four years ago, a new service called OnLive debuted, offering a whole new way to play and get games using online streaming. Rather than downloading games or buying them from stores, you streamed them from online servers and paid for the access rights – meaning low-cost, no-storage-required gaming that just required a solid internet connection and which promise to revolutionise the way we played games. The reality, however, was far less rosy. By marketing itself as its own platform – alienating both publishers who worried about game sales cannibalising those on established platforms, and players who were forced to decide whether to buy their games traditionally, via OnLive, or both; selling some games itself – cutting it off from retailers; and giving developers an extra step in the development process to support the platform, OnLive made an enemy of practically everyone; and in 2012, the company folded, its assets sold off and all the staff laid off.
Now though, OnLive is back and learning from its mistakes, thanks to a relaunch in the hands of the buyer, a new (legally-speaking) company also called OnLive. After 18 months out of the limelight, OnLive has returned under new management and carrying two new business models.
The key to the new OnLive is a brand new offering called Cloudlift. Thanks to a partnership with Valve, OnLive now has access to the full library of Steam games, bringing thousands of games of all different kinds to the platform. OnLive will now let you buy Steam games and add them to your Steam account through the service, solving the platform separation by potentially allowing the same game to run on multiple devices through both OnLive and Steam itself. The magic comes with OnLive’s streaming abilities. Once again, when playing a Steam game through OnLive, you won’t actually be downloading and playing the game locally – instead, the game is streamed to you over an internet connection from super-fast, super-capable servers hosted by OnLive, meaning no storage is required. In a genius touch however, slam in your Steam account details and as long as you’re using Steam’s Cloud Save feature, Cloudlift will grab your online save for each game as you load them up, so you’ll be able to continue the same game you have on your traditional Steam-enabled device. If you have a solid internet connection (2mb/sec minimum, 5mb recommended download speed), you may never notice the difference.
As Cloudlift is available as a smartphone app and as software for PC and Mac, the service potentially will allow Ouya and other Android-based consoles to get the full range of Steam apps and play them with high performance, instantly increasing their usefulness and the size of the game libraries; and also potentially means a game you start on your PC can be later played on the Mac at work, with little change in performance even if the power of all the devices is completely in different leagues – all you need is a compatible controller. Cloudlift comes with a heavy price tag, however, at $14.99 and £9.99 per month; and with only Steam games on offer at the moment, the choice is limited to your already-purchased and future-purchased Steam Games; you don’t get a whole range of games included in the price like with movies on Netflix. Along with this is the problem that not all Steam games come with cloud sync, meaning they can still be streamed but won’t allow players to pick up where they left off.
Luckily, OnLive are not resting on their laurels, as they have two additional plans in the works to increase the game library as they come along. First, the original OnLive game library will soon be relaunched, meaning the company will once again start sellings its own games too. While this will remain a separate service to Cloudlift for now, any games bought from OnLive will also come with seven days’ access to the same game on Cloudlift – whether this feature will remain or be enhanced in future however is yet to be seen, as the company are not committing heavily to the OnLive market to prevent it repeating its past mistakes. OnLive is also allowing games publishers to partner directly with them and deliver demos of their games to stream through the services, which will be a white-label service – so the publishers are free to credit the games however they like (expect names like “Sega Go” or “EA Live” to crop up, for example). Gaijin Games are one of the partners named to be on board.
Will the new strategy allow OnLive to succeed where it once failed? And will full online streaming become the future of, or a strong alternative to, both digitally stored and physical media gaming? Time will soon tell.
The folks over at HiRez Studios are always hard at work adding new Gods and tweaks to their 3rd person MOBA. Today, they’ve dropped a new trailer on YouTube for Scylla the Horror of The Deep.
The trailer below details the new God’s lore, moves and some different fighting scenarios.
Check it out, and don’t forget to tune in this week as our DJs will be telling you how you can win a code to unlock either Agni or Nu Wa as a playable character as well as an alternate skin.
